Online Cryptic Crosswords

July 26, 2008 12:21 PM

Free, printable, daily or weekly, online cryptic crossword?

Most previous posts have focussed on those odd American style (all white with hard words and easy clues) puzzles. I am looking for UK style (lots of black squares, easy words with hard clues). The Guardian online (linked to previously) is no longer free.

I started doing these recently and am at about the level of a Rufus (Monday Guardian, Yorkshire Post, I think), but looking for something just a little more challenging. I don't live in the UK and really don't want to order more English-language printed material when I should be reading in Spanish. Hence the online requirement.

Thanks.

posted by not sure this is a good idea to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (19 answers total)

Best answer: I have yet to come across a free, regularly updated cryptic crossword site since the Guardian and the Globe and Mail started charging for theirs, so I'm anxious to see if anyone will provide a site. I'm sure you know that if you put "free cryptic crossword" into Google you get a number of hits. the best one for your purposes appears to be this one:

http://www.gptucker.net/crosswords/crosswordlist.htm
posted by dropkick queen at 12:45 PM on July 26, 2008

also this:
http://www.poinscrosswords.com/weekly_puzzles.html
posted by dropkick queen at 12:45 PM on July 26, 2008

Best answer: I was just looking into this today! The Sydney Morning Herald has a daily cryptic online, available here, but I haven't tried actually doing theirs before, so I can't speak to the quality of the puzzles themselves. You can download .puz files and open them in Across Lite (free), and complete them in that program or print them out from there. I'll be interested to see if there are other good suggestions.
posted by redfoxtail at 12:48 PM on July 26, 2008

(I'm specially interested in finding cryptics available as .puz files, myself, which is making me pickier in my search than it sounds like you need to be in yours.)
posted by redfoxtail at 12:58 PM on July 26, 2008

Best answer: The Herald (Scotland) has daily cryptics for free, and even archives going back four months. I love them, even if the clues are a bit UK-centric at times.
posted by pmdboi at 1:20 PM on July 26, 2008

No idea where they are on the difficulty scale, but the Independent has theirs online.
posted by Lebannen at 2:38 PM on July 26, 2008

Best answer: I have yet to come across a free, regularly updated cryptic crossword site since the Guardian and the Globe and Mail started charging for theirs

The Globe & Mail doesn't charge anymore.
posted by juv3nal at 3:54 PM on July 26, 2008

Response by poster: thanks - it was the newspapers i was looking for, but the granite one looks like it might be ok too. i'll give them all a go...
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 6:50 PM on July 26, 2008

Try Ron Sweet's website, Kegler's Kryptics: http://www.lafn.org/~keglerron/kegler.html. I think he might have pointers to other cryptic sites. Also try the National Puzzlers' League website http://www.puzzlers.org.
posted by Sia Stewart at 7:50 AM on July 27, 2008

Response by poster: hmmm. so the independent needs a java plugin installed, which for linux 64bit is non-trivial (my notes here). even with that, it's not printable because the clues are in a scrollbox.
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 9:19 AM on July 27, 2008

Response by poster: in case anyone else is interested - i tried the herald, and it's a bit easier than the ones i've been doing, i think (a lot of obvious anagrams, and some "embedded" text ones that aren't exactly challenging), although 19 across (RADA, for example, is a friend to milions [7]) was quite amusing/misleading (especially given all the anagrams elsewhere). tomorrow i'm going to look at the globe.
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 5:58 PM on July 27, 2008

Response by poster: the globe+mail was fun. similar level of difficulty to the herald, as far as i can tell, but more interesting cluses (less anagrams!). best clue: "indigestible food for example ... sent back [6]".
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 7:44 AM on July 28, 2008

Best answer: The Irish Times recently opened up their website a lot and it seems that you can now download today's Crosaire (crpytic) crossword in a printable format. You can also pay for access to prior Simplex and Crosaire crosswords.
posted by tiny crocodile at 5:37 AM on July 30, 2008

"indigestible food for example ... sent back [6]".
refuse?
posted by swapspace at 1:50 PM on July 30, 2008

Response by poster: no. you're ignoring the "..." :o)
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 6:18 PM on July 31, 2008

ah, ya. stodge
posted by swapspace at 4:09 PM on August 1, 2008

Best answer: some more news... i contacted the company that supplies the globe and mail crossword. partly because i thought today's was particularly good (a bit easier than normal, but very clear - no ambiguity at all), but also to find out if they gave the compiler's name. it turns out that they do give the name in some cases and they pointed me to press and journal (main site) which attributes today's puzzle (not the same one as the globe) to rufus. that means that (1) there's another source of crosswords not listed here (and they're printable) and (2) that some of these crosswords are "decent standard" even though they're not in the big name papers (the company - gemini crosswords - says on one of their pages Our authors' direct clients include The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Financial Times and other well-known journals. Syndication brings you these high quality puzzles at affordable rates.).
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 9:48 AM on August 14, 2008

Response by poster: (although it's quite possible that rufus alone covers all those... :o)
posted by not sure this is a good idea at 9:49 AM on August 14, 2008

The Guardian put all its crosswords online here as of September 1. They're... hard.
posted by pmdboi at 9:21 PM on September 11, 2008